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this time last year i was very heavily pregnant – but only for a few more hours. in the wee small hours of 1st june 2010 i went into labour, and shortly after midday daniel made his way into my world.

my life is better because of him. i’ve only had the pleasure of knowing him for one year, but i can honestly say it’s been the best year of my life.

tomorrow is his FIRST BIRTHDAY!! i can’t believe he is already one! we’re not doing anything big for his birthday – he won’t know what’s happening, and we’re kind of looking forward to just having a wonderful, relaxing day with our son, enjoying him. if the weather’s good we’re going to head to the beach (it doesn’t look promising, i must admit 😦 ), going to our favourite chinese restaurant for lunch (yeah, that particular treat is especially for us parents! ha ha!), visiting grandparents for a short while before indulging in cake. beautiful cake.

and this is where my part comes in. yes, i don’t want an extravagant party, but i did want a special cake for daniel. he loves sugar, and i love him – hence the cake 🙂

megan is not martha, but she’s pretty darn close! she made a cake a while ago – a leprechaun trap cake – that i have taken my inspiration from. i’m not as good as her, not even close, but i made a stab at it, and here is my result …

start with a box of white cake mix, and make up as it says to on the box

grease the cake tin

split the cake mix into 7 bowls - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple ... and the remaining left white. the ratios for splitting can be found on not martha's site

add food colouring to each of the bowls. a word to the wise - perhaps using food colouring so near your white laptop isn't the best idea in the world??

put the cake mix into the angel cake tin - white, then red, orange ........ putting each "ring" of each new colour inside the previous colour

all the colours are now completed - cook in the oven at 170C/325F for about 20/25 minutes - i checked mine a few times before it was completely cooked through

pretty pretty colours left over

the smell is too good for daniel to stay away 🙂

cover the cake in green frosting - to represent grass. a little imagination may be required when looking at my cake! ha ha!

mine looked a bit boring and bare, so i added a ring of skittles round the edge for a splash of colour - "taste the rainbow" and all that jazz

goodnight daniel! next time i see you you'll be ONE!

my frosting was a complete disaster!! i did try and make it look like grass like megan did, but after adding 1 kg of icing sugar, the consistency was still too runny to take any shape form other than just flat on my cake. that’s probably why the finished cake looked so darn boring before i added lots of sweets!

i don’t know what the inside looks like yet – we’ll be singing “happy birthday” and cutting it tomorrow. i’ll share my success (or lack thereof) of that tomorrow or the day after. i really hope it worked out ok – it would be such a disappointing 1st birthday cake if it was a complete failure!! 🙂

this isn’t a tutorial. if you want to make this cake yourself then i suggest you follow the actual tutorial on not martha’s blog. she knows what she’s talking about more than me. but i’m pleased with my first attempt at it. (maybe – we’ll see how we all enjoy it tomorrow!!)

my name is danielle. i’m wife to one man (stanley) and mother to one little boy (daniel). i love to make and do, but between house-keeping and child-rearing there aren’t many minutes left in the day to indulge in my own pursuits. i usually don’t even have the energy to even contemplate taking out my sewing, or my painting, or whatever, after dinner’s been eaten and daniel’s in bed. but i still harbour dreams and aspirations of hand-crafted goodies.

we’ve just moved house to the country. it’s a beautiful house, but it needs finished. it’s not a building site by any means – no, it finished well inside – it’s just not finished finished (if you know what i mean! ha ha!)

it needs decorated. it needs colour. it needs patterns and furniture and rugs and stencils and curtains and everything else. and it’s all up to me.

i don’t have unlimited funds to just go out and buy what i want. this entire home “improvement” will be done on a budget. and it will stetch my creative abilities. but i know i can do it, if i put my mind to it. and i can’t wait to learn new skills.

i’m going to share my progress here. and i’ll be posting other people’s wonderful tutorials that i’ve used, or that i plan to. and i’ll show you photos of my inspiration. and photos of my interpretation (read: what mine ends up looking like! ha ha!) hopefully by the end of it i’ll have a stunningly beautiful house, and i’ll have the pride (humble pride of course) in knowing that i did it myself.

if i manage to squeeze just a few more extra minutes out of my busy busy days then i also plan to start making my own gifts to save money … but seriously, at this point that’s still just a pipe dream! 🙂